Chapter 847: On the Eve of the Great Conflict's Outbreak, the Political Commissar Infiltrates to Seize Military Power

After Chen Yan's words landed, a faint but distinct stir rippled through the ranks of the three thousand Private Soldiers on the Fortress wall.

Someone's crossbow twitched.

Someone shifted his boot back half a step.

Helian Shi's voice was pulled to the limit of his throat, and his tone had changed.

"Who dares to retreat! I'll slash him! The Helian family has raised you for years, and now you run away like a white‑eyed wolf!"

The Private Soldier commander beside him leveled his crossbow, gritted his teeth, and aimed at the crowd below the Fortress wall.

Chen Yan's hand turned half a circle on the reins, and he glanced over at Helian Shi.

"Helian, charge a wave first, test their mettle."

Helian Shi's voice erupted.

"Lingzhou garrison, First Battalion, charge!"

Three hundred newly formed Lingzhou garrison troops cut out from the flank of the crowd, hoisting simple ladders and sprinting toward the western wall of the Fortress.

The Armor on them reflected chaotic flashes in the morning light, and their footsteps merged into a dull drumbeat.

The crossbow strings on the Fortress wall sounded.

Arrows poured down from the top of the Fortress wall like a storm, so dense they wove a dark net in the air.

The front‑line garrison soldiers were hit by arrows, shrieking as they fell onto the edge of the trench; the ladder slipped from their hands and crashed onto the rubble.

Helian Shi's fist struck the saddle.

"Damn it, the crossbow fire is too dense, we can't charge up!"

The three‑hundred‑strong charge broke up seventy or eighty men beneath the Fortress wall and was forced to retreat.

Helian Shi, leaning on the battlement atop the city wall, forced an off‑key cackle from his throat.

"Chen Yan! You come with this ragtag crowd to assault my Fortress? I've stayed in this Fortress for a year without fear!"

He pointed his finger at the garrison soldiers knocked down below the Fortress wall, and his laugh grew sharper.

"Aren't you the living Yan King? You have the Duke's business…"

Yuwen Ze spurred his horse, staying to Chen Yan's right, his complexion turning iron‑blue to the limit.

"A Xiong, have Helian call for a heavy siege engine, we can't fill it with lives!"

Chen Yan sheathed the Horizontal Blade back into its scabbard at his waist, and tapped the hilt lightly with his finger.

He didn't look at Yuwen Ze.

His gaze passed through the silhouettes of Private Soldiers re‑stringing their crossbows on the Fortress wall, and landed on a certain direction inside the wall.

The curve of his mouth slowly rose.

"The siege engine is too slow."

Yuwen Ze's voice quickened a third.

"Then what shall we do?"

Chen Yan turned his head and glanced at Gao Jiong.

Gao Jiong's voice dropped to a level only three people could hear.

"Chancellor, Wang Erniu reported last night that among the three thousand Private Soldiers inside the Fortress, eighteen hundred are tenant farmers and slaves forcibly conscripted by the Helian family from surrounding villages, and their fathers, mothers, wives and children now stand in the crowd outside the Fortress wall."

Chen Yan's finger paused a beat on the hilt.

"How many did Wang Erniu mobilize inside?"

Gao Jiong's voice lowered another half step.

"Four hundred have already signaled covertly, waiting for a signal to act; another six or seven hundred are watching, and once the signal sounds, at least half of those watchers will defect."

Chen Yan withdrew his gaze from the Fortress wall and turned toward Ye Zhuxi.

"Zhuxi, where is that powerful bow you brought?"

Ye Zhuxi dismounted a gigantic composite bow nearly five feet long from their horse; its limbs were layered from water‑buffalo horn and Elm Wood, the string woven from three strands of bull tendon, strong enough to launch a heavy arrow beyond three hundred paces.

Their finger drew a specially made singing‑bolt Fire Arrow from the quiver; the shaft was a notch thicker than a regular arrow, the tail tied to a bamboo whistle, and the tip wrapped in hemp cloth soaked in pine resin.

Chen Yan gave them a glance.

"Wait for the Duke's order."

Ye Zhuxi placed the singing‑bolt Fire Arrow on the string, the bow standing on the left side of the saddle, ready to be drawn and released at any moment.

Chen Yan turned, facing the civilians and garrison soldiers below the Fortress wall who, after being suppressed by a volley of arrows, were regrouping.

He gave no order for a second charge.

He spoke, his voice raised to a height that every person on the Fortress wall could hear.

"Brothers on the Fortress wall!"

The Private Soldiers re‑stringing their crossbows on the wall heard the call, and a few of them paused their hands.

Chen Yan's voice rose another notch.

"The Duke knows most of you are not of the Helian family; you are Lingzhou tenant farmers, Lingzhou peasants, strong‑armed men seized from your homes by the Helian family!"

He pointed his finger at the black, pressing crowd below the Fortress wall.

"Look down and see who stands below you."

Several Private Soldiers on the wall couldn't help but peek down.

They saw the civilians holding hoes and dung forks, the disheveled women wailing, and the emaciated children cradled by their mothers.

A young Private Soldier's lips trembled.

Chen Yan's voice deepened, heavy enough to crush into each person's heart.

"Below stand your fathers and mothers! Your wives! Your children!"

He pointed again toward Helian Shi above the Fortress wall.

"He Lanbo burned the grain in the Changping storehouse, letting your families starve to death, then forced you to take bows and crossbows and shoot your own relatives!"

His fist clenched in front of him, his knuckles emitting a very faint "ka‑ba" sound.

"Can your arrows even be shot!"

The commotion on the Fortress wall grew louder than before; someone lowered a crossbow, another's hand kept loosening and gripping the crossbow stock, gripping and releasing.

He Lanbo's complexion shifted from ghastly pale to iron‑gray, his voice cracking to a hoarse rasp.

"Don't listen to him! Whoever dares to lower a crossbow, I will cut them down! Shoot! Shoot for me!"

The Private Soldiers leader lifted his hand, then lowered it again, and the crossbow's aim shifted two inches off.

Chen Yan withdrew his gaze from the Fortress wall and whispered two words.

"Signal."

Ye Zhuxi's arm rose the instant those words landed, the massive composite bow's string drawn to a full moon, the bow trembling slightly in her hand, her fingers carving three deep gouges into the string.

She released.

Swoosh!

The whistling Fire Arrow, with a shrill scream that could pierce eardrums, shot up from the position outside the Fortress wall, tracing a straight line of flame, soaring over the three‑zhang‑high wall and embedding heavily into the wooden pillar at the top of the keep.

The bamboo whistle's shriek burst in midair, so sharp that even the Private Soldiers on the Fortress wall couldn't help covering their ears.

When the resin‑soaked canvas tip of the arrow struck the wooden pillar, a dazzling blaze ignited, the flames leapt up the pillar and set alight the banner atop the keep embroidered with the He Lan clan's Clan Emblem.

The banner curled in the fire, burning to ash, its black fragments scattering on the wind.

Inside the Fortress, in a storeroom less than fifty steps from the Fire Arrow's impact, Wang Erniu sprang out from beneath a haystack.

His right hand gripped a dagger hidden in his boot, his left hand clutched the dark‑red badge, his voice exploding from the deepest part of his throat.

"Brothers! Signal's arrived!"

He drove a knife through the back of the nearby aristocratic overseer who was frantically shouting for the Private Soldiers to fire arrows; the dagger emerged through his chest, blood splattering half his face.

He kicked the overseer's corpse onto the ground, raising his arms and shouting.

"The pillar‑state outside has come to distribute grain to us! Turn against these vampires! Open the city gate!"

In the three adjoining chambers beside the storeroom, over four hundred low‑rank Private Soldiers, already roused by Wang Erniu and the Hidden Agent, moved together at this roar.

They seized everything at hand—Horizontal Blades, Long Spears, hoes, even those bearing benches—and surged madly toward the city gate.

Within a few breaths, the slaughter inside the Fortress spread through every passage.

He Lanbo looked down from the city wall, seeing the blaze in his own backyard, the Private Soldiers tearing each other apart, and Wang Erniu's blood‑stained dagger and the badge on his chest glinting dark‑red in the firelight.

He let out a desperate, anguished scream from the deepest part of his chest.

"No, impossible!"

The heavy cast‑iron‑and‑wood double‑layered gate of the fort, pulled by the internal winch chain, emitted a long metallic grinding.

The hinge turned within the Shicao, the chain tightened then slackened, and the winch's crank was being frantically turned by a dozen pairs of veins‑popping arms.

The city gate slowly swung outward.

Morning light squeezed through the gap, illuminating the faces of the low‑rank Private Soldiers inside the Fortress, their faces smeared with blood yet eyes bloodshot.

Chen Yan rode a black horse, drew a Horizontal Blade, its tip pointing at the widening gap.

"Kill."